1. Technical Field
The present invention is related to an optical wiring board and a manufacturing method thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
Due to the high speed and large capacity of data processed in electronic components, the conventional printed circuit board technology using copper-based electrical wiring patterns has reached its limit. In order to overcome the problems of the conventional copper-based electrical wiring patterns, optical wiring boards including optical waveguide are recently receiving attention.
In the optical wiring board including the optical waveguide, the optical waveguide that can transceive signals through light by using polymers and optical fibers is inserted in a printed circuit board, and this is referred to as an electro-optical circuit board (EOCB). The EOCB is commonly employed in switches and transceiving devices of a communication network, switches and servers for data communication, communication for the aerospace industry and the avionics, mobile phone base stations of a universal mobile telecommunication system (UMTS) and the backplane and daughter board of a super computer.
The optical wiring board requires that a mirror be formed in the optical waveguide to change the optical path.
In the conventional technology, a metal is coated on a mirror groove by way of sputtering or E-beam evaporation in order to form the mirror in the optical waveguide.
In the sputtering or E-beam evaporation, however, a relatively large quantity of metal is used to coat an area, and an expensive metal, such as gold, is used, increasing the production cost.
Furthermore, although the plating method is inexpensive to perform, the plating layer may not be properly adhered to an optical waveguide layer.